The 'Mormon moment-um'

I was recently asked by a Brazilian reporter of Istoe Independente, a weekly magazine, to share my lay thoughts on the media focus on Mormons in light of the Mitt Romney presidential campaign and related flashes of high-profile Latter-day Saints.

As the shutters continue to open, we wish the world to know our ultimate aims and our daily aspirations. My complete desire, as is the case with faithful Mormons, is to follow Jesus Christ — whom we worship as the Son of God. We believe he has provided more than one witness of himself.

As members of LDS Church, we work. We are motivated by our love for the Lord and his for us. We accept the grace of the Atonement. We believe in eternal families as revealed.

We dance. We eat cake. We're engaged in all sectors of business. We prepare for emergencies. We commune with God in prayer and seek personal direction. We believe in educating hearts, minds and hands. We have an amazing corpus of Christ-centered youth leading the world in virtue and voice. And we strive to align ourselves to God's will on a daily basis.

We are not a cult. We are Christians in the real sense of the word: followers consecrated and striving to live and bring his message of salvation to all. We believe in chastity before marriage, fidelity within marriage. We offer tithes and we participate with many other religious and civic organizations in providing timely and vast amounts of relief to the poor and the needy globally. We are active in our communities.

Dear World, we love you, and we love the Savior. We're not seeking to appease the media and change an image. We are about correcting the image that some have created before you, reclaiming the conversation about who we really are. We no longer wish to be driven by much of past years' online media posts, and again, we appreciate many who have invested in sharing appropriate coverage of our faith.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are not collectively interested in having Romney win the campaign. Members have diverse political views, spanning the spectrum. And while a good percentage of recently polled Latter-day Saints are conservatives (see Pew Forum poll on Mormons in America), there are many members who cast their votes in other directions, as with any election.

In my opinion, the light we want to come through this "Mormon moment" and curtain of curiosity is, ultimately, the light of the Savior. We want you, we want the world, to have that association, that awareness of us — that all we strive to be as Mormons is a result of our gratitude for the Savior's life and sacrifice. It's out of love for him and out of his love for us and is rooted in an understanding of his fully revealed gospel plan.

We respect, as well, those who oppose our beliefs. But we certainly wish they knew what beliefs we really have to oppose or not.